Los Angeles Gets Own TLD

DM420 writes "On June 9th, Los Angeles officially becomes the world's first city to have its own Internet domain.Great to hear since one day I hope to be an owner of my own TLD and this is a step in the right direction. ;) The registry is located at www.la and further details at DMnews.com" Looks like an Irish firm made a deal with Laos to use the .la TLD. Looks to be on the pricier side of domains, though.

Comments

Article

[Phroggy]

Wait wait wait, "officially"? Isn't the .la TLD still officially assigned to Laos, and they've just cut a deal with some company to promote it as a Los Angeles TLD, just like the TLDs of Western Samoa, Tuvalu and Belize are promoted as "Web Site", "Television" and "Business" respectively? Does the City of Los Angeles even know about this?

Seriously, this isn't worthy of a news article. It's just a country trying to make money and a company trying to make more money by trying to trick people into believing that anyone cares. If ICANN had assigned a TLD to a city, THAT would be news.

Re:Article

[MikeFM]

These deals always strike me as lame. I can understand why poorer countries do this but I count the companies that cut the deals among the cheesier entities online.. right after spammers and porn sites. Do we really want to advertise for these clowns?

Re:Article

[Phroggy]

These deals always strike me as lame. I can understand why poorer countries do this but I count the companies that cut the deals among the cheesier entities online.. right after spammers and porn sites. Do we really want to advertise for these clowns?

I agree. This is the second completely retarded article I've seen in 6 hours.

They're trying to promote "hooker.la" and "coke.la" as "premium names" for $100. It doesn't get much sleazier than that.

Re:Article

[SEE]

I hope the Laos Government is getting totally screwed. Laos's government is one of the sixteen Most Repressive Regimes on Earth.

Re:Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether or not the actual event was dumb, I don't see that having a slashdot article about it is. Plenty of people may want to know that companies are doing this sort of thing -- and slashdoters love to 'discus' disliked companies.

Re:Article

[Archie Steel]

It's also one of the poorest. A good case can be made that if the country hadn't been bombed back to the stone age by the U.S. during the Vietnam War (for no really good reason, either, since the U.S. lost anyway), then perhaps they'd have a nicer country to live in. War and widespread destruction will damage a country's social fabric, you know...that kind of environment can sometimes be good breeding grounds for totalitarian regimes.

I do hope that Laos is getting a good deal out of this, but I also hope that Laotians in general will benefit from some of it.

In the meantime, check out the Jhai foundation, they do some pretty good stuff. The chair of the Jhai foundation actually participated as part of a bomber crew during the Vietnam war. Having brought pain to this part of the world, he now wants to make amends by bringing peace and the internet to Loatian villagers. He's also part of Veterans for Peace and a really decent guy.

In any case, it'd be some sweet irony that one of the poorest nations on Earth would get some money for selling TLDs to one of the richiest part of the world... :-)

Re:Article

[citog]

... mainly the ones that the USA 'frees'? :-)

Re:Article

[Archie Steel]

Tens, if not hundred of thousands of Laotian civilians were killed in U.S. bombing runs over Laos. I'll bet ya they weren't all right on the Ho Chi Minh trail, whose strategic importance was later minimized by the U.S. government itself. You may think that thousans upon thousands of civilian killed, entire communities being wiped out by carpet bombing, doesn't have an effect on a country's development. I tend to disagree, and so do most sensible people.

The U.S. "war effort" in SE Asia was a misguided and unjust colonial war, perhaps one of the last of its kind. I find it puzzling that some people still try to defend it. The "red scare" arguments can't even be used, since it's now generally accepted that the main reason that Ho Chi Minh went Communist is that the U.S. sided with France.

This was not a communist revolution, it was a war of liberation for the Viet-cong. The only reason they went for communist support is that these were the only one who would help them. This is why the vietnames people overwhelmingly supported the North, even in the South, a fact that the U.S. failed to understand and which led to its resounding (and costly) defeat.

Re:LA?????

[Phroggy]

Won't this be confusing when the state of Louisiana gets its own domain?

Not at all, because Louisiana already has .la.us, and .la will be quickly forgotten. :-)

Re:Should they be promoting this?

[Phroggy]

Note that this TLD has absolutely nothing to do with the City of Los Angeles; the city probably doesn't even know about it.

Why not under .us?

[unsinged int]

Cities should not have TLDs. There's too many of them. At the very least they should be under a .us domain or, even better, under a .ca.us domain.

couldn't agree more.

[Vellmont]

I find it rather sad that this gets posted as news on slashdot, given that slashdot is supposed to be run by geeks. I'd expect this from my local newspaper, but CowboyNeal should know better.

Having said that, what happens when the people of Laos decide they want to use their TLD? I know it's a small mountainous country with very little technology, but I just heard a story yesterday about how the small country of Bhutan just got cable TV (a country where Buddhist monks outnumber soldiers). Point being it'll probbably happen eventually.

What happens when these countries get wired?

[astrashe]

What's going to happen when these countries who sell out finally get wired? What will they do for domains?

Re:What happens when these countries get wired?

[Imperator]

If they want those domains back, they'll simply take them. Country TLDs can do whatever they want subject to the laws of that country.

And I won't be shedding any tears over it either. This is similar to the rape of poor countries for raw materials and natural resources that the locals are not developed enough to exploit themselves. Once the country is ready to take over, they usually just nationalize that industry. The foreigners who made a killing (no pun intended) off local labor and land whine, and sometimes the rich country will step in with coercion.

For an example, google for United Fruit and Guatemala. It's that sort of shit that caused 9/11 and continues to cause widespread hatred of America.

Re:What happens when these countries get wired?

[mark2003]

It's not Loas saying anything - that would indicate some kind of democracy in action. It's some wealthy autocrat getting a kickback...

So it's not rape, but it is still selling something you perosonally don't own in the first place.

Re:I agree

[AvitarX]

Noone I know calls Austin, Texas au the same can be said for every single one of the cities you listed.

OTOH,
LA is a very reconizable term for Las Angeles, At least it is here in the US.

A few of the ones you listed would work for states here. But if I said I was going to AU to visit a family I would get a retarded stare.

someday

[jmarkantes]

What is Laos gonna do in 50 years or whenever it's actually a pretty wired country? What does gov.la point to? Something's gotta give in that time.

J

Lasik is not trash

[Hecatonchires]

Best thing I ever did. Clear vision is taken for granted by to many people.

Re:laos should be revoked the right to .la

[cimetmc]

Quite on the contrary. It's ICANN that is contributing to the mess by keeping the top level doimans scarce so that there is a lot of money to make in the domain business. If ICANN would open up the top level domains, then there would be no need to misuse the country TLDs.

Marcel

Re:Pr0n connection?

[pommiekiwifruit]

Not most of the world's watchable pr0n. My vote goes to Prague ;-)

Re:Holy see, Batman!

[Erik Hensema]

The vatican doesn't have it's own currency, though it does have a country-specific side on their euro coins, as every euro country has. But since there are so little of them (vatican euro coins), they are almost all in the posession of collectors.